Only Child
by Green Aquarium
Summary: Keesha's a person who can sometimes lack appreciation of imagination. For her, it may just sometimes hurt to consider what could've been.


Sometimes Keesha didn't understand when Dorothy Ann so passionately complained about her little sister. Being an only child, while something she didn't strongly mind, was nothing to envy. Maybe's that because when Keesha thought of Evan, she thought of an opportunity that she herself would never experience. Never knowing the complex realities of being a big sister that D.A. and Wanda lived with. And that, to Keesha, was something to envy.

* * *

"They're not going to become vampires Ralphie," she exhaustedly insisted to no avail, "this is all just in your head."

"Keesha, just trust me for once! I know something's not right."

Still, as much as she was proud to not fall for his paranoia like Arnold had, when she was even the slightest convinced that night that her grandmother was going to be transformed into a monster, she was the first to flap her bat wings in search of their guardians.

She had already lost people important to her before. She had to make sure it wouldn't happen again.

* * *

"Grandma…", Keesha stated, "I want to see Mom and Dad today…"

"Alright, Keesha. We can leave right now." These trips to the cemetery had become more frequent over the past few months, since Keesha started the new school year. Her grandmother was a bit concerned over the quantity of these outings, but simply assumed that the girl just required to connect with her parents closer as the result of the new changes in her life. Keesha needed this and being the only blood relative the child had left, her grandma supported her.

Driving to the graveyard, Keesha sat in the passenger seat, idly looking out of the window. She recalled being six, an age she sometimes wished she could've been forever. She thought back to all the time she had spent with her parents before they were gone. Trips to the zoo on sunny days to see the elephants. Reading picture books together before she dozed off to sleep. Her parents proudly watching her take swimming lessons at the community center. The time they all flew to Hawaii, building castles in the warm soft sand and calming strolling through shady green jungle trails, her father giving her a piggyback ride when her feet were tired.

Arriving at the small cemetery, the first leaves of autumn were turning yellow and starting to fall on the dry grassy earth. They were the only ones there. The two of them walked up unhurried to the smooth gray tombstones.

"Keesha, if you want to be by yourself, that's fine. I can visit some old friends a few rows over," her grandmother offered. She knew her granddaughter sometimes liked isolation when they visited.

"Okay. Thank you." She stood over the headstones, her little shadow casting over the inscriptions that she had already memorized. Keesha never brought flowers, even at her young age her abrasive side thought them too tacky and meaningless in comparison to the conversations she shared. Keesha began to whisper to the tombstones, despite the fact that nobody could hear her if she spoke loudly.

"Hi, Dad. Hi, Mom. We all went on another field trip yesterday, this time to outer space. Just like the astronauts in the movies. We landed on Mars, the planet that's the color of rusted metal. Ms. Frizzle showed us the glaciers at the planet's poles, and we climbed to the apex. We felt like giants up there. Nothing but ice as far as the eye can see, like something out of a dream."

Keesha also told her parents in hushed tones about seeing the sun up close, how they had lost Ms. Frizzle in the asteroid belt, and how they used her hints to cleverly deduce that she was on Pluto.

Yet it was the excursion to Mars that had the most profound impact for her, out of all the incredible things they had done that afternoon. Looking at the vast fields of cold pink below, seeing the lifeless desert in all its beauty that no photograph or painting could capture, for the first time she had wished her parents were there with her and the others on a field trip. Wished they could've known Ms. Frizzle and Carlos and Phoebe and all the others and loved them just as much as she did.

"I wonder if Mars could've been another Earth, if it had water and wasn't so cold?" she had pondered on the frosty slopes.

Those words now echoed inside her: "could've been". What could've been was that she had both of her parents with her always. What could've been was that she would have a little sister to love and play with. But it was impossible, like Ralphie's vampires or aliens. It could not be, no matter how much she wanted it.

"I want to say that I'm sorry," Keesha began, even though she knew it was nobody's fault. "I'm sorry we couldn't have been a family longer. I have another family now, one that I think will watch over me just as well as the two of you did. And make sure I'm not alone. I think you'd be so very proud of them."

She stood up and walked over to her grandmother, looking back once at the twin gravestones sticking out of the ground.

"I'm ready to go home now," she said softly. The two of them returned to the car and drove back home.

* * *

The following day at school, Keesha walked inside to class to find that Ralphie was the first one there, lazily staring at a diorama of dinosaurs in the corner that Tim had made.

"Ralphie, I'm sorry we didn't find any aliens the other day," she told him.

"Oh, that's alright. Clearly, they're in another star system. Maybe Alpha Centauri!"

She couldn't help but smile slightly.

"Thank you."

"Yeah, for what?" he asked confused.

"Just for being you and being there for me. It means more than you know."

"Okay, Keesh," he replied, thinking he had a good idea about what was troubling her. "You know, if you ever need somebody to listen to you, I'm all ears and always free."

"Fine. You think it's another field trip today?"

"Who knows?" he said.

But no matter if they all found themselves just sitting in the classroom for the day, or flying off to god knows where to some place only a magic bus could find, Keesha knew that she had her family by her side.


End file.
